


dead photon

by so_soft_boy, ymirjotunn



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Asphyxiation, Dissociation, Eye Trauma, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Murder, Strangling, Violence, brief description of child sexual abuse, coughing up blood, graphic depictions of injury, hand trauma, interrogation room, it goes about as well as you think it does
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:36:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23465518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/so_soft_boy/pseuds/so_soft_boy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ymirjotunn/pseuds/ymirjotunn
Summary: there are a lot of ways to kill someone. it went like this at least once.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira
Comments: 2
Kudos: 78





	dead photon

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [quantum](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23465521) by [so_soft_boy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/so_soft_boy/pseuds/so_soft_boy), [ymirjotunn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ymirjotunn/pseuds/ymirjotunn). 



> written in collaboration with so_soft_boy and companion piece to [his side of the story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23465521).
> 
> please mind the tags. <3

In the elevator Goro can hear the ocean.

He knows it isn't really the ocean, knows that's just a story adults tell to acclimate children to all the visceral sounds of their own fragile flesh. It's just an echo of the rushing of blood in his own ear, a roar that demands to be heard and understood as proof that he is alive.

The elevator opens and he steps out into the hallway, adjusts his coat, feels acutely the weight of the gun in his pocket.

Nothing can stop him anymore, he realizes, dimly and delighted, as he comes to a stop in front of Niijima. What is she doing here? Whatever. He doesn't even really hear himself talking to her. He feels himself smile, knows he's speaking and can see the expression on her face, but none of it makes sense.

Or, more accurately, none of it matters. Because Kurusu - Joker - is just around the corner. Goro has no idea what state he might be in, just knows that cops have even more of a hard-on for unnecessary violence than _he_ does and that's saying something because he's been fantasizing about this moment for a _long_ time.

Whatever they've done, they will have incapacitated him, thoroughly. Joker can't run from him now. He'll sit there and he'll take whatever Goro decides to give him.

He will beg for the mercy of death and he'll have it when Goro's good and _fucking_ ready and not a moment sooner.

"Akechi-kun?" Niijima is saying. Goro forces himself to smile with his eyes and takes whatever she's holding out to him, looks down at it.

He can't tell what he's supposed to be looking at, but he holds it back out, shakes his head and demurs.

He can’t fucking believe she’s still standing there. Trying to have a conversation with him. He gives Niijima one last smile, and steps past her, pretending that he does not feel a hot horrible disgusted fury at having been interrupted in his slow deliberate walk to his destiny.

His shoes click against the concrete floor of the hallway, tapping out a threat that echoes in the emptiness, and then his hand falls on the doorknob and there's a surge of some kind of feeling in his chest, sick and boiling. Ecstasy, he decides; his hand is trembling and he doesn't know when he started smiling like this, the way he does when he's feeling something too hard and isn't paying enough attention to regulate his face.

Not on the way in, though. He stares at his hand, wills it to still until it does. Lets the serial-killer smile slide off his face. He is composed. Perfectly aligned with the world around him. Everything is as it should be and Goro is especially, exceptionally, absolutely as he should be.

He opens the door.

Joker sits there, one hand limp on the table. He looks, at once, _utterly ethereal_ and _fucking horrible_. He's badly bruised just about everywhere Goro can see, fresh-dried blood beginning to crackle on his skin. His expression is… blank, faintly distant, clearly drug-induced. Goro wonders, vividly, if whatever they have him on will affect the way he experiences sensation.

This is nothing like a regular hit. He doesn't need to be efficient. There's no one here to tell him to hurry it up, and even if there was, he's the professional. Not to mention that every factor is in his favor. All the time in the world. Complete control of the situation. A flawless plan and a nasty grudge. There's no reason not to indulge himself.

The door swings shut behind him. _Click_. It's locked.

He steps up to the table, and Joker's eyes follow him, slow, exhausted, moving just a little too slow to be fully aware of his surroundings.

"Oh, Joker," he says, low and soft, and those eyes snap to his face. "What have they done to you?"

“What haven’t they?” Joker mumbles. Still manages to be nothing but witty rejoinders. It’s like he has no concept of circumstance. He’s just tapping his fingers on the table, the same way he would idling at Leblanc.

His eyes can’t linger on Goro for too long, unfocused and exhausted, but they keep flickering back to him, at least until Joker just closes his eyes, letting his shoulders relax. Goro bites the edge of his tongue. No. _No_. Open your _eyes_. _Look_ at me, he wills.

“Akechi?” Kurusu says, and then his eyes do open again, scanning slowly over Goro’s face, brows twisted with uncertainty. “How did you-- what are you doing here?”

He looks so delicate in the fluorescent lights. He always looks more fragile in plainclothes, but he looks especially pathetic now, a little hunched, curled into himself. He's not always so hot, is he?

"I came to rescue you, of course," Goro says, smiles with the comforting aura of a liar. He can feel his legs trembling. "I know most of the people here, and I have the clearance. It made the most sense for me to get you. I'm sorry I couldn't get here earlier." 

He is. Truly. He _hates_ the people who dared touch Joker, who dared mark his skin, who thought themselves good enough to hurt him with their own hands. They should have left him intact, unmarred, preserved perfect in all his delicacy.

Joker should be his to bruise and his alone.

He walks behind the table, stands behind Joker's chair, feels like he is a thousand meters taller than Joker right now, looming over him, spine curved like a threat, settles his hands on Joker's shoulders. "Don't worry. I've got you, Joker," he says, kindly, sweetly,

and wraps his hands around Joker's neck and _squeezes_ , leather creaking, a helpless gasp for air wrenched from Joker's throat, yanks his head back hard by the chin so Joker is forced to look at him can't look at anything else can only watch and lets himself grin, eyes wide and wild, the chair makes a horrible scraping sound as it grinds against the floor with the force of the motion and Goro laughs, laughs, laughs.

He catches his breath, devours the way Joker's eyes look right now, scared and frantic and foggy and fucked, pupils pinpricks of dark from whatever drugs they've got in him, so tired and so terrified. Goro thinks he has never been happier. He can feel his own heartbeat, hammering somewhere between his chest and his neck. Joker’s hands claw uselessly at his own.

"Just kidding," he says, when he's done laughing, still smiling, can't _stop_ smiling, he's so happy, everything is perfect just perfect just perfect. "I'm going to fucking _kill you_." 

His hands move so much faster than Joker's mind can right now, struggling, addled, away from his neck ( _bruised_ Goro hopes because gloved hands don't leave fingerprints and he plans to blur whatever bruises are there now with plenty more anyway and he just wants to see it, wants to see Joker destroyed by his hand, wants to ruin every inch of him bloody and bruised and broken _Goro's fault_ ) to the back of his skull, flat palms push _hard_ and Joker's face slams against the surface of the table with this awful _crack_ and Goro feels sick joy in the pit of his stomach at the sound.

Joker’s own throat makes a beautiful sound, too, a crackling hiss of pain, and his arms fall limp to his side. For a moment Goro wonders if he’s fragile enough to have been knocked unconscious with something as simple as that preliminary blow, but Joker has never been one to go down in one shot. He has a surprising mastery over both subtlety and speed even as impaired as he is, manages to slam the chair into Goro’s legs hard enough to catch him off guard -- _fuck_ , that aches, low in his ribs -- and rolls across the room.

Even on his hands and knees, he’s grinning, the hungry grin he wears when he’s ready to take down a shadow he knows he can handle. _Why?_ This isn’t a fair fight. Even _he_ has to know this isn’t one he can win.

And yet Goro is _so_ grateful that Joker is always Joker. No matter how indisposed. That's what makes this so fun. That's what makes this matter, when none of the other _encounters_ Goro has had have ever mattered. This is one he'll remember in full clarity. Not think of hazily in colors and sounds. _Remember_.

“Great!” Joker says, fake-cheery, breaking on the vowels. His arms are shaking, but he’s _still_ fucking trying to stand. Goro stares down at him, still smiling, eyes narrowing into hateful slits. Pathetic. Joker's _pathetic_ , dripping blood and wretched on the ground, drugs battering his system, and he still thinks he can fight.

“Go ahead and try,” he says. Try. _Try!_

His confidence, his optimism, his _rebellious spirit_ \- it's disgusting. It's nothing. It's all empty air and twitching muscles and promises that mean nothing at all and it makes Goro sick with rage.

He strides forward, as Joker struggles there on the floor to rise, blood painting his lips arms visibly shaking head so heavy it's hard to lift, and kicks him between the ribs with the toe of his boot. And the _sound_ he makes. The breath that bursts from between his lips, nowhere else to go, in a sort of wracked cough, and Goro laughs again, louder, it's so _good_ to be alone because he isn't afraid anymore of someone hearing him and telling him to get a grip telling him to shut up with that freaked-out look on their faces now here now the only look that matters anymore is the one on Joker's face, the panic and anger and spite glowing white-hot and beautiful behind the blood and bruises.

"Do you honestly think I have to _try_?" Goro asks him, savors the sight of his body twisted on the floor, momentarily paralyzed by the sudden loss of oxygen. "Look at the state you're in, Joker, and then look at _me_."

He walks closer, places the heel of his shoe atop the hand splayed on the ground, _grinds_ down and hears something click and then snap so he pushes harder, rolls his ankle and listens to the strangled breathless whine of pain that worms its way from Joker's throat. "You see," he says, down to the bones he's breaking: "this is what I _do_. This is who I _am_. I'm not your friend. I'm not your _teammate_. I'm not a pretty face on the television. I'm a liar and I'm a killer and I'm _going to break you_." His voice is starting to break in places from the strain but it doesn't matter.

He savors the sight of Joker struggling, _again_ , to force himself back up, pushing with the hand that isn’t being ground into the concrete. Adorably, he reaches out with that hand to grab Goro’s knee, digging his fingers in with all his pitiful strength, _basic_ self-defense stuff that barely even registers, and Goro’s honestly about to laugh at him and then Joker goes for his dick with surprising force and he's even _more_ amused, even through the nausea that seizes his spine in a momentary chokehold as he stumbles back, bent over. Then another sharp pain twists through him, an elbow to the stomach, yanks more breath out of him than he thought he even had, but through the tension that wracks his muscles and forces him inward he manages to lift his head, pulled upward like some poorly-controlled puppet, look Joker right in the eyes and give him a horrible smile, the kind that reaches his eyes but doesn't reach his eyes _right_.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” There’s blood bubbling out of Kurusu’s mouth now, spilling over his lips and down his chin. “Go on, kill me.”

The wall in the way of his breathing crumbles, and he gasps for air, uncurls himself and stretches out his arms. He still feels a little unsteady, faintly sick and aching everywhere, but he has a fucking _job_ to do.

"Oh, no," he says, hoarse and crackling. "I'm not going to kill you yet."

He takes a step closer. Joker has nowhere to run. Blood smears his throat, starting to soak the smudgy white of his shirt, and he looks so fucking _tired_ underneath all the adrenaline. He's not going to last much longer, Goro thinks, at least not hours and hours like he'd _been_ lasting, no matter how stubborn he is, no matter his determination. _He's not that fucking_ \--

"You think you're so fucking perfect," he tells him (he can say anything he wants now), disgust dripping from his voice, spits at him as he takes another step closer. "You think you can do _anything_. That you can get away with whatever you want. Well, you _can't_."

Another step and Joker's about to move but bruised balls or not Goro is still faster, sober and unbruised and with minimal blood loss, so he closes the distance and throws a punch, catches Joker in the jaw so hard the other cheek slams into the wall. "Sooner or later," he screams, "the world is _going_ to catch up with you!" Hits him again, and again, knuckles hot and bruising even behind the cushion of his gloves.

“I know,” Kurusu wheezes, quiet and blood-bubbly. 

Goro does not stop to let him speak. "Like it catches up with _all of us_!" He grabs him by the shoulders and _yanks_ him down, knee connecting with the soft flesh of Kurusu’s stomach. Blood splatters onto the floor. He slams Kurusu back upright against the wall before his spluttering cough is even finished, hears him gagging wetly on his own fluids.

With his next punch his fist connects with an eye and he feels soft within the hard bone of eye socket and his breath catches, gleeful, thinking of the things he might've just done. At worst he'll get to watch the eye blacken. At best he'll have that _and_ he's done real damage to the eye itself.

He hopes Joker's vision has gone half-black, that he'll be blinking blood, that he'll keep fighting back with one good eye and no good ribs, bleeding and broken and pushing himself to keep going even when he _can't_ , because that's all Joker's good for, going when he can't, going when he _shouldn't_ , and Goro's going to prove (hits him again, hits him _again_ , _hits him again_ ) that even that is fallible. That even perfect beautiful wonderful Akira can still fail.

Kurusu is blinking fast, breath dripping in his chest and wheezing through his throat. “I fucking _know_!” he gasps, and it’s clear he’s _trying_ to scream but can’t. “Shut _up!_ ” He raises his arms, weak, slow, plants his hands against Goro’s chest and pushes him back. Laughable. Goro’s feet don’t even move across the floor. But he’ll listen. For a minute.

“The _world_ wants me dead for existing,” he says through blood and Goro wants to laugh. “I know! I can’t do one good thing. Can’t even _live_ without consequences.” Goro can’t even think through the hot fog in his head, in his chest. _Kurusu fucking Akira_ can’t do one good thing? _Him?_

He looks up to Goro’s face, still blinking, but his eyes can’t focus on anything anymore. Is he crying? He's crying. How fucking _pathetic_. Disgusting. Where's that bravado of his? That swagger, that confidence, that devil-may-care attitude that constantly puts him in dangerous places and yet _never_ seems to backfire. Gone. It's all gone. Under Goro's heel and ground to dust. Without his pretty mask to hide behind he's just a child, bloodied and shaking and pitiful in his near-death.

“What did I do to _you_ , Crow? What did I do wrong?”

The name catches Goro by surprise, and he takes an involuntary step back, sways a little before he settles. It's both a comfort, gliding over his shoulders and curling around him like a scarf, and an accusation, not pointed but _spiked_ , something that tumbles painful down his throat and sticks there like a briar in his chest.

But it's just another weak shot at him, isn't it, just a reminder of his betrayal meant to tug at his heartstrings. Just another desperate attempt to make him feel something, to appeal to his pathos, to get him to remember his humanity.

And perhaps those tactics would work on another man. Someone who _has_ feelings _has_ pathos _has_ humanity. But Goro? 

It just makes him angrier.

"What did you do wrong?" he repeats, body cold and still. The anger clears the fog from his head, focuses him, pulls him into that frozen place where nothing matters but the object of his rage. "What have you _ever_ done wrong, Kurusu?" His eyes are fixed on Kurusu's bloody mess of a face, on the dark liquid that's slowly welling up behind his cornea, spilling out over his iris.

"The world wants you dead for existing?" He tastes warm spit and bile at the back of his mouth, feels himself swallow. "The world wants a lot of us dead for existing, Joker. You're hardly the only one." Thinks about the way his mother's neighbors looked at him, that afternoon, how they whispered in the hallways even though he knew they knew he could hear them. Thinks about hands bedecked in expensive-looking watches and cufflinks, grabbing at him, holding him by his wrists or his hair or his neck, grinding cigarettes out on the skin of his bare thigh. Thinks about the way they'd look at him - the way they _did_ look at him and the way they _would_ look at him - if they knew what he was really like, all the prosecutors, all the detectives, all the studio execs and journalists, all the flouncing fangirls and fame-drunk mommies.

"You, though," he says, and he can feel himself smiling again, "the world _loves_ you. For all it wants to kill you, Kurusu, you're so--" His voice cracks. "You're so fucking _loved_."

The words grit through his teeth like he's spitting sewage. "All your little thieving friends. Sakura. That girl in the church, the child in the arcade, that woman who comes to do your laundry-- your teacher, isn't she? They all _love_ you, Joker. For no other reason than that you _exist_."

His hands are shaking again. Joker is blinking at him, slow, looking slumped and spent and pathetic.

"So," he says. "What did you do to me?" Takes a step closer. There’s a bruise blossoming ugly red-and-purple around Joker’s one blood-darkened eye.

He laughs, just once, loud and echoing in the near-emptiness of the room. "You got in the way," he says, voice strained. "You--" 

_Smiled at me,_ he thinks, vitriolic. _Laughed, cracked jokes, memorized the way I take my coffee, trusted me, looked at me with eyes so kind so unassuming so genuine I wanted to tear them from your face and you would've still smiled at me._ "You thought you could _change things_. Could change this _world_ , rotten to the core as it is." Hubristic, confident, beautiful, shining angel, perfect in every way, idol of his peers, praised and sweet and loved and wanted, striding forward into the darkness of humanity and cutting out every unsightly thought. Bile rises in Goro's throat again.

"You don't _deserve_ an easy death," he says, fixes his eyes on Joker's. "You deserve to suffer as much as everyone else in this world. And I'm not going to let you forget that for a _moment_ before you die."

Kurusu stares at him for a moment, gaze hazy and exhausted, and then his bloody mouth snaps into that wicked smile of his again. “Fuck me for trying, huh? For being lucky? What are you, karma?”

Goro is about to explain to him that _yes for all intents and purposes he is_ when Kurusu _laughs_ , the sickest, wildest, most _familiar_ laughter Goro has ever heard spill from his mouth, letting his head fall back, and finally he crumples against the door, but he doesn’t stop laughing, just lets his head settle onto his knees for a minute, laughter dissipating into choked-out chuckles until he just… stops.

He raises his head again, tipping the back of his skull against the wall, looking with his one good eye right at Goro, right _into_ Goro, and he _smiles_ , not wicked this time. “Okay. Okay, Akechi.” Peaceful. Calm. Resigned. Goro’s hands are shaking.

Kurusu’s eyes flutter shut. Even this battered, this broken, he still looks so beautiful. “Take my penance. It’s about time you won.”

Goro frowns. He _pities_ him. 

Acid surges at the back of his throat.

His eyes flick toward the door, the one Kurusu is blocking with his broken body, and for a moment he wonders just how much trouble he'd be in if he bolted, right now, refused to give Kurusu the satisfaction, refused to fulfill the expectations people have for him, but he's too far gone now.

Locked in, literally, figuratively.

His hand jerks to where the gun is tucked in his coat pocket, head hissing _finish this get it over with be done with him_ but he doesn't-- doesn't want to shoot. 

Doesn't want this to be over.

Ha. Haha.

He kneels in front of Joker, between his splayed legs. The concrete feels cold even through his slacks.

"Aren't you scared?" he says. Searches Kurusu's face for any kind of expression that makes sense, but it's just this faint, unreadable smile, tinged with a wretched peace that Goro can't puzzle apart. "Aren't you-- don't you feel betrayed? Don't you feel _angry_?"

He needs for Joker to be hurt. He needs for Joker to be afraid of him. He needs for everything to have meant something. He needs to get all of this over with and out of the way so the only thing that's meant anything in his life for as long as he can remember will come to fruition. Joker's the last thing in the way of Goro's success. If he reminds himself of that often enough it will become true. It will be true. It will be true. His legs are shaking and he can feel the concrete bruising his knees and his eyes are fixed on Joker's closed eyes and he doesn’t know if he wants them to open or not.

“‘Course not, ‘kechi.”

Why does he sound like that? Like he--

Kurusu opens his eyes, one obscured in blood, the other meeting Goro’s gaze, unafraid but gentle, genuine. He is still smiling. He lifts a hand, and Goro doesn’t understand why - what is he going to do at this point, what strength does he have left - but the hand lifts, past any vulnerable point, fingers outstretched.

A thumb brushes his cheek, and those fingers tuck a strand of hair behind Goro’s ear. The trail of touch on his skin feels like it was painted in acid. He can feel himself just staring, pathetic, eyes wide and confused, hands frozen at Joker’s upper arms, only barely touching him.

“I don’t blame you,” Kurusu says, lets his hand drop.

Nothing makes sense. This was supposed to be the only thing that did make sense but nothing makes sense, nothing he says and nothing he does, as though it ever did, as though Kurusu Akira has ever made any sense at all and nothing Goro feels or thinks makes sense now either and he can’t tell the difference between anger and everything else anymore. It doesn’t even matter. It doesn’t even matter.

“Hey, if you’re gonna off me, better do it soon, ange-” His lungs collapse the word into a wheeze, folding itself into a series of blood-soaked coughs. The fit doesn’t so much stop as it peters out, into wet half-formed gasps for breath. 

He’s right. If Goro wants to do this himself, and he _does_ , doesn’t he--

“Shut up,” he says but it comes out in the most wretched voice he can imagine, half-shriek and half-snarl, shot through with cracks. His face is hot. “Shut up.” There, he’s steadied it a bit, says it like he means it. “Shut up.” His hands are at Joker’s throat. _Angel_. His face is hot and the acid on Kurusu’s fingertips has taken on a life of its own, rolling wet and painful down his cheeks.

“This is my fault,” he hears himself saying. He doesn’t know why. “You idiot, this is my fault.” Kurusu’s throat trembles under the pressure of the hammocks of Goro’s thumbs and he only smiles up at the face of death, eye blood-black, so tired, so kind, does not say a word but Goro flinches under his gaze and screams when he says it this time: “Shut _UP_!” 

Useless. Kurusu couldn’t speak if he wanted to. He can’t even breathe. The hammering of his heart is going quiet and soft beneath Goro’s fingers.

“You’re such a fucking fool,” he tells him, and he’s as tired as Kurusu now, all the urgency bled from his voice. It’s impossible to tell if his words are heard or understood. Kurusu has let his eyes drift closed, but he opens them again, half-lidded, half-smiles. They close again. They do not open.

At some point Goro’s hands begin to ache. He’s not sure how long he’s been kneeling here, how long he’s been holding Kurusu by the throat, how long Kurusu has been dead by the time his own knees give out and he collapses into an unmoving chest.

It’s strange. He’s never touched a dead body before. Has never stuck around long enough to do so. Has never wanted to.

He lets himself lie there for he doesn’t know how long, face tucked into Kurusu’s still chest, like he’s trying to soak up all the warmth of the body before it dissipates. It doesn’t work, of course. His face, his body, everything is so cold.

When his legs stop shaking he leans back, looks at the body in front of him. For a moment he’s struck by how delicate Kurusu looks, as though he has the features of a sculpture lovingly wrought by deliberate hands, not those of a human being.

For a moment the idea of kissing him flits through Goro’s mind. Nobody would know. Nobody would ever know. This is the one chance he’ll ever have and Kurusu wouldn’t even be able to fight back.

And then the disgust hits him, nausea filling his lungs like dirty floodwater, and he seizes Kurusu’s body by the shoulders and hurls it to the side with a shout.

He stands, kicks whatever of Kurusu’s limp body still blocks his path out of his way, and opens the door. His gun still weighs him down from inside his coat and it’s all he can feel of his body, that weight and the acid-painted pattern on his cheek and ear.

Goro walks out into the hallway. He makes it to the elevator. No one stops him. He takes out his phone inside, intending to text Shido, report the results of the hit like he’s supposed to, but his hands find the Metaverse app instead, and then he’s tumbling down onto his hands and knees onto the familiar striped marble floor of his own palace.

His vision is blotchy, dark in patches, blurring the stripes even worse than usual, and he retches, head tucked into his body.

Just before he passes out he feels arms wrap around his torso, warm, blessedly warm.

**Author's Note:**

> hey reread this with the knowledge that crow is trans and goro is a deadname lol


End file.
